Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating: R
Directors: Park Chan-wook
Quick Impressions:
I would have called this movie Beautiful People Are Creepy, Huh? I’ll guarantee you that no one would watch the first half hour if the Stoker family weren’t blessed with beautiful faces and a gorgeous home. When nothing in particular happens to people with average looks, nobody cares. If you expect people to pay to watch you do nothing, you must be either strangely beautiful or grotesquely ugly. The Stoker family, it seems, is full of strangely beautiful people with grotesquely ugly souls. That’s cinematic gold.
My husband and I went to see Stoker tonight because my stepson wasn’t with us for Easter, and we’re waiting for him to watch G.I. Joe 2: Everything’s Better with the Rock and Bruce Willis. (I think people would have more fun picking movies if I got to name them.)
Anyway, despite the fact that the theatrical trailer gives away the entire plot—maybe not the best choice if you’re presenting the movie as off-kilter, slow-burning Hitchcockian suspense—Stoker is pretty good and definitely more entertaining than it should be.
Though its artistry is a little too self-conscious and heavy-handed to work as great cinema, Stoker is definitely great for people with asphyxiation fetishes. (As I wrote that sentence, I could hear Sean Connery saying, “She’s a gasper!” Remember Rising Sun?) I’m not kidding. If you live and breathe for asphyxiation, then this movie will be the perfect addition to your home video library.
Sometimes I suspect Nicole Kidman selects projects in order to provide quality viewing for fans with various under-represented fetishes, and honestly, I can think of worse ways to build a filmography (as well as less generous explanations for Kidman’s unusual body of work).
Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not knocking Kidman’s performance—she’s great in this—or implying that the movie is not a perfectly respectable piece of legitimate cinema. All I’m saying is, what a godsend for people who long for nothing more than a tight belt and someone to strangle with it!
The Good:
Sometimes the cinematography is a bit much. You’d never mistake this for a home video or a slice of real life passing before your eyes. It’s impossible to lose yourself in Stoker because the set design and cinematography are so overbearing that at every moment you are entirely aware that you are watching a (very, very stylized) movie. (The average Charles Dickens novel is less self-consciously atmospheric. In Stoker, the house does more than its fair share of the acting. It pretty much carries the early part of the story. Those early scenes would be very dreary without the basement lights, the piano, and the staircase.) That said, the self-aware movie scenes that Stoker has to offer are all fittingly arresting, visually rich, and for the most part, aesthetically pleasing.
The performances are uniformly excellent. After the movie, my husband asked me, “What’s Mia Wasikowska in?” I replied, “Everything.” But she’s usually a blonde. I think she’s more captivating as a brunette and thought she played the character quite well. Nicole Kidman has a more stunning look, but Wasikowska is just as compelling to watch and she makes India (with all her eccentricities) strangely believable.
I’m mainly familiar with Matthew Goode from stuff my mom watches over and over again (i.e. Leap Year, Miss Marple). I really liked him as Uncle Charlie, though it’s hard to praise him adequately without punning idiotically on his name (believe me) because his performance is by no means great, but it’s certainly not bad. I can’t imagine anyone playing Uncle Charlie better (though there’s definitely something lacking about the character. I don’t know if it’s the way he’s written, or if a different actor could have given us something slightly more. But I think it’s the writing, and I liked Matthew Goode.) I love the way Goode plays his last scene and delivers Uncle Charlie’s final line.
Jacki Weaver, meanwhile, sure makes the most of limited screentime! (One day soon they’re going to start calling her The Queen of Limited Screentime.) If you thought she was barely in Silver Linings Playbook, then brace yourself, because in this movie you look down to adjust your belt, and she’s gone! But her acting is really marvelous. I found her the most realistic character, certainly the most average member of the family. I love her face in the phone booth.
Near the end of the movie, Nicole Kidman delivers a great monologue. In every scene she’s in, she’s very good, and in some ways, I preferred her scenes with Wasikowska to the scenes with Uncle Charlie. The two women are both playing such strange (and different) people. It’s quite interesting to watch them together. Kidman is excellent as Evelyn and, honestly, elevates the material, but though she doesn’t need more to work with—she manages just fine—she certainly deserves more. She definitely makes the most of everything she’s given, though.
The end credits gave me the impression that the piano duet the two Stokers play was written for the movie. If that’s the case, I have to say the music is fantastic. (If it’s actually an existing famous piece of music, I apologize for my inexpert ear.) Even if I’m wrong, Clint Mansell’s score is still quite captivating. And though initially a bit taxing, the director’s obsession with magnifying every small sound eventually pays off plotwise.
Best Scene Visually:
This sounds ridiculous, but honestly, fairly early in the movie, there’s a scene where Nicole Kidman’s character, Evelyn Stoker, is standing in front of the staircase, talking to her difficult daughter India as she plays the piano. Watching that image—Kidman in front of the staircase—I thought, That is the most perfectly beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Honestly, that shot was worth the price of admission. For a while, I’d been sitting there thinking, This movie is trying too hard. The cinematography is too self-aware. There’s too much style, and it’s choking the life out of the substance, and the substance is dying, gasping for air…
(I actually came up with that metaphor after seeing the movie. But in the moment, I did think that the style was overwhelming the substance.)
And then I saw Nicole Kidman just standing there in front of that staircase and all was forgiven. In fact, it gave me a great idea for a photo essay in a glamour magazine—Nicole Kidman stands in front of staircases. Throw a different dress on her. Give her a different hairstyle. Whisk her around the world to pose in front of all different kinds of staircases. It’s like The Bridges of Madison County except with no plot and more staircases.
Seriously, this shot was so good that I forgave the movie for all of its heavy-handed short comings. Why did I find it so captivating? I have no idea. I’m not even particularly a Nicole Kidman fan. (Don’t get me wrong. She’s a beautiful woman and a great actress who takes commendable—and sometimes baffling—risks. She was spectacular in Moulin Rouge, To Die For, and The Others. But as far as I’m concerned, the greatest thing she ever did was distance herself from Tom Cruise.) Actually, I can’t remember ever seeing Kidman give a bad performance, so I’m certainly not knocking her. I’m just saying, I’m not a die-hard fan, so what is it about the way that she stands in front of the staircase that made me willing to watch her stand there forever? I don’t know, but it was a great, great shot.
Best Scene Visually That Wasn’t Nicole Kidman Standing in Front of a Staircase:
My husband really loved the swinging lights in the basement. Personally, I thought they were a bit much. (It was like the flickering lighting in Gothika. “Yes, we always keep the lighting eerie and flickery in the insane asylum so that it’s more disturbing because that’s a good idea,” said no one.) The only reason to swing the basement lights the way India does is that you’re expecting to discover something like what she finds down there, and you just really want to savor the moment. But I will say that such (over)dramatic flourishes do make the movie memorable and relatively unique.
Best Scene:
Other scenes are probably better, but my favorite part was the bit on the merry-go-round in the dark. For once, the visuals and the dialogue are working together (and each working at full speed), and what India says (the stuff about seeing a photograph of yourself from an odd angle) really gets to the heart of the story. Plus how many penetrating movie lines are delivered on a merry-go-round in the dark? I say, best use of a merry-go-round since Strangers on a Train! (Runner-up, The Crush, but only when it’s dubbed into Italian so the cheesy dialogue is not distracting. See my explanation below.)
Best Action Sequence:
Whether you’re a cinephile or an asphyxiation fetishist or both, the best part is what happens to the unfortunately named Whip and then what happens afterward. Even the characters in the movie seem to think that’s the most enjoyable part, and this audience member agrees with them. For one thing, the pace finally picks up there. For another, at last, the story and the cinematography are on the same page and working together effectively. I think the movie should have started here. Perhaps this moment is supposed to be a big surprise, but the problem is, you can see it coming from a thousand miles away. The previews hint (and more than hint) very heavily, and watching the movie, it’s hard to imagine it going any other way. So I think this development should happen sooner, and then the movie should move on to something else. However, I’ll take what I can get.
The Negatives:
Probably the biggest thing wrong with this film is that it was made in English. Seriously, if filmed in any foreign language, I am completely positive it would have gotten universally rave reviews. Park Chan-wook should have made it in Korean.
A critic watches this and thinks, “Well, the cinematography is overstated. The sound isn’t subtle. The script is not sufficient.” Change the words to French. I guarantee you, people would rave, “Ah, the French crack their eggs with such a strange music, and what an odd profundity we find in their silence, a profundity missing from their words! What magnificent irony the director has shown
us!”
When a film’s greatest weakness is its script, that problem can almost always be fixed by changing the language. (Then the audience takes some responsibility and doesn’t put the whole onus of communication on the movie.) One night I happened to see the pretty terrible Cary Elwes/Alicia Silverstone feature The Crush on TV in an attic hotel room in Italy. Dubbing the movie in Italian improved it immeasurably. A once familiar film became slightly disorienting, and I watched it more closely, watched it on its own terms. (In that case, of course, superior voice acting by the Italian performers was also a factor.)
If Stoker were in a foreign language, I think critics would have an easier time accepting the primacy of style (at the expense of snappy dialogue and no plot holes). If you take the movie on its own terms, style over substance isn’t really its problem, because the style is the substance. Clearly style is where the director’s investment lies. The mechanics of the plot are only set dressing. With better dialogue, the characters may have been more complex. With less said, they are instead, more profound. Basically, this movie is something foreign (in terms of not being what we usually get in a Hollywood feature) presented to us in our own language. And I think that the English-speaking packaging confuses people’s expectations.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the movie is a great artistic triumph. Chances are, in any language, it’s only a good movie, not a great one.
For one thing, Nicole Kidman’s character needs more development. I felt slightly cheated by the lack of revelations about her character. We learn so much about Uncle Charlie and India (and actually, even the father). But Evelyn Stoker seems to exist in the film solely as a red herring. At the beginning, we think, Hmm, this set-up seems familiar. Is this movie going to turn into Hamlet or Lolita? And in some ways, I feel Evelyn’s only purpose is to lead us to ask those questions and to feel vaguely uncertain of the answer. In a lot of ways, she feels like a plot device, and I think she deserves more development in her own right. I really wanted to know more about her.
I’m also very confused about Aunt Gwendolyn’s behavior. Knowing what she knew, she should have stayed where she was and called the police immediately. That the circumstances of the father’s death didn’t raise any red flags with anyone but the audience just seems beyond belief, but the story does seem to take place in the deep south, the region of the United States most known for its Gothic uncanniness.
Another thing, the fact that an entire gang of teenage boys teases India at school seems quite hard to believe to me, especially because they do so during art class. I’m not saying that teenagers can’t be jerks and that boys never harass girls. But in my own experience, it’s usually other boys that entire gangs of boys relentlessly harass. Teachers tend to notice more when the victim is female as do other boys (not just the one odd ball guy). I’m very surprised that this dynamic was allowed to flourish for so long. I’m not saying it never happens. Very odd people get teased by everyone, regardless of gender, and boys do horrible things to girls all the time. But it still seemed weird because India’s behavior at school was not all that strange, and the guys were physically harassing her during class. I thought that added almost nothing to the story, unless it’s a kind of odd testimony to India’s nature. Wink could have been in the story without the gang of thugs who seemed like they were pretending to be in an S.E. Hinton novel.
Finally, there are a lot of seeming plot holes, but most of them can be explained away pretty easily because: 1) The family is quite rich, rich enough to own random institutes, 2) All of the characters are pretty weird (and weird people make weird choices), and 3) The movie ends abruptly, so who knows what happens after that! All the stuff we’re wondering about might be taken care of immediately in a logical, real-world fashion. Who knows?
Still, as you watch, you are never going to mistake this for reality. It’s clearly a very, very self-conscious movie. And it’s not quite good enough to take itself so very, very seriously.
Overall:
Stoker is a cool movie. It reminded me fondly of the pair of saddle shoes I wore almost every day to kindergarten. The shoes are really the only things that India Stoker and I have in common. Well, that and the disquieting idea that we may not actually know the most authentic versions of ourselves. Aesthetically, the movie looks like Alfred Hitchcock playing a practical joke by making a movie that looks so much like a Hitchcock movie that it doesn’t really work as a Hitchcock movie because it gets too carried away dressing up like one. (Only Hitchcock would find that funny enough to go through all the effort.)
Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska (who makes a compelling brunette) give great performances. Phyllis Somerville and especially Jacki Weaver make the most of small roles. And Matthew Goode really sells Uncle Charlie. It’s got to be hard work to make anybody seem eerier than the Stoker house which is constantly upstaging all the actors!
If you’re looking for a movie that will take your breath away—i.e., if you’re really into asphyxiation and have a thing for tight belts—then Stoker is a must see for sure!